Two Non-Cherry Blossom Related Signs of Spring

1. I saw a group of men aged between 45 and 65 playing a serious game of hardball. They all had full uniforms on, and one of the teams was called "The Masters." I don't think The Masters won, however.

2. The boy who lives nextdoor has begun searching for insects again. I saw him outside examining the bushes with a pair of binoculars.

Springtime in Tokyo

Today both Kate and her friend SYL left Japan. SYL had been visiting during spring break, and Kate is going to visit New Zealand with her mom.

SYL seemed to really enjoy her visit. She and Kate did a lot of fun things together, and she has promised to e-mail us a blog entry upon her return, so she can tell all of you about the highlights.

Yesterday we did some hanami, or flower watching, in Tokyo's Shinjuku Gyoen. It was really beautiful, and we got to hang around with our friend Nagu and his parents. Since we last saw him, Nagu has started walking and talking (he only says a few words).

Here are some pictures:


Regarding the last picture, the Nagu made friends with that little girl, until she noticed that Nagu's sippy cup of barley tea looked exactly like hers, and she assumed that Nagu had stolen her cup. There were many tears, but she was finally calmed down, and as she was leaving our area she waved at the sippy cup and said "bye bye tea."

Reason #51 That it is a Good Idea to Get Involved with the Michigan Interscholastic Policy Debate Community

A friend from high school debate who now works for an entertainment promoter gave Kate and I extra tickets to The Who's Tommy this week, and they even ended up being in the front row. It was the broadway cast, and they sang in English, with giant screens displaying rough Japanese translations (I glanced at them a few times, and they seemed to be trying to keep the rhythms of the music rather than literally translate). We both really enjoyed the show.

Also, I discovered that the NCAA is broadcasting video feeds of the basketball tournament for free online. The online broadcast will only cover the first three rounds (ie it will exclude the elite eight, final four, and title game), and I found myself thinking "if the Spartan men make it to the Elite Eight, how will I watch them?" Luckily, my Spartans took that worry off of my mind with Friday's game.

The women are still in it though, so hopefully things will fare better for them.

The Round-up Continues

Miso and Peso left today for the very long flight back to the east coast. So sad to see my friend go . . .

Sunday, Miso and I went to Japanese culture day at the Tsukuba information center. Daniella was both participating in tea ceremony there and was having her ikebana exhibited there.

So I witnessed my first tea ceremony. I had actually tasted the frothy green tea typical of the tea ceremony in Kyoto in October. I didn’t love it. The tea this time was actually better, though. When we moved here and heard about the tea ceremony class and I decided I wasn’t interested in it, Mike was surprised. Ditto for ikebana. But I knew they weren’t for me: too exacting, too detail-oriented, too many opportunities for criticism, and too long and complicated for an action that was ultimately pretty simple. But that isn’t to say that I don’t think the activities are cool, neat, and interesting. And I admire people who have the patience to do such things.

In the tea ceremony, each action is choreographed. It’s a bit like ballet, I think: it seems like pretty dancing, but it really is a lot of hard work that only those schooled in it can truly appreciate. And people study tea ceremony for years (the Bulgarian woman from Daniella’s class had also studied tea ceremony for two years in Kyoto). So Miso and I were just kind of watching, knowing each movement was significant, but not really getting it. The whisk used to make the tea is cool, though: a piece of a single bamboo stick, shaved and sheared to make a whisk. Because it’s made from bamboo, the whisk is a lot less heavy than it looks like it would be.The tea ceremony also included a “tea sweet.” This was a Japanese sweet all the way: bean paste, rice flour, and (a seasonal inclusion!) plum blossoms. The tea sweet actually looked a bit like a taco: the beans wrapped in a very small rice flour “tortilla.” The sweet wasn’t that small, though: maybe about 3 inches long (you can see a bit of it in Dietrich's [Daniella's husband] hand in the picture).It was hard to figure out how to eat the sweet. We were given a “sweet pick,” which is like a long toothpick that you can use to cut and spear pieces of the sweet. Of course, we only found this out later. Yes, Miso and I taco-ed the tea sweet, grabbing the whole thing with our forefingers and taking it all to our mouths! So very Japanese, no?

The ikebana exhibit was also cool. Since the flowers were set against the window, the lighting made it more difficult to take more than one picture, though. I think that ikebana is something I would like to learn more about, but, again, I am not sure that I would have the patience for it or the poise to listen to searing critiques of my design. One thing I did learn was that you can’t have just two of the same flower in your design. At least I think that’s how it goes.

So that was Sunday. Here are some pictures from earlier in the week with Miso and Peso:

The last week, a re-cap

We’ve been really busy since the last entry. Mike has been working hard on his research, and I’ve been touring around Tokyo with two sets of guests, Scott and Meredith and Miso and Peso. Each night, I’ve been totally exhausted, meaning to post, but just too tired to do so. I never really thought that I had any “Tokyo skills,” until I tried to lead four people who’ve never really been to Tokyo around the city for three days straight . . . .

On Monday, we went to Kamakura to see the giant Buddha. The weather wasn’t amazing, but the rain did hold off, mostly. Since the weather was iffy, we didn’t go for the beach picnic option as I had when I went with my mother in October. Instead, we found this great mostly vegetarian restaurant where they make their own tofu. Generally, I am not a tofu fan. I find it cold and rubbery. But fresh tofu here is soft and creamy, a bit like yoghurt, but without the dairy bitterness. So I am getting to like it. The tofu (and the whole lunch, really) at this place was amazing.

We even found a Leonidas shop at which to buy dessert!

Then we saw the big Buddha. Miso and Peso even paid to go inside the Buddha.After that, we went to another nearby temple, Hasadera. From the top of the temple, there was a great view of the white-capped ocean and all the windsurfers and surfers out there.

On Tuesday, we all went to Asakusa to see “old Tokyo.” I’d never been to Asakusa before, nor to Sensoji Temple. The walk from the first gates of the temple to the second, inner gate (about 100 feet) took about 40 minutes because we kept being stopped by groups of schoolchildren wanting to practice their English.

A typical encounter would be something like this:

Students, in a chorus: Hello!
Us: Hello.
Student 1: I am Kenzo Watanabe.
Student 2: I am Mariko Hayama.
Student 3: I am Yukiko Tanaka.
Student 4: I am Hiroshi Yoshida.
Students, in a chorus: What is your name?
Us, very slowly and clearly, each in turn: I am . . .
Students, producing a blank world map and some stickers: Where are you from?
Us, very slowly and clearly, each in turn: I am from . . .
Students, producing a clipboard with a sheet filled with signatures of Anglophone names: Sign here, please!
[We sign, as evidence that we did, in fact, talk to them]
Students, producing folded origami stars, pandas, cranes, etc: Present-o!
Us: Thank you! Thank you very much!
Students: Goodbye! Have a nice day!
Us: Goodbye! Have a nice day!

Repeat.

Meanwhile, as all of this was going on, there was an announcement blaring in the background that was saying something like: “Please talk to the schoolchildren when they approach you. It is very important and will help them to make their English more beautiful.”

We finally made it to the temple. The temple also has a pagoda, which is pretty cool.

For lunch, we went to this great okonomiyaki restaurant. Okonomiyaki is a type of Japanese savory pancake that you usually cook at your table on an inlaid griddle. We cooked ours and they turned out to be pretty delicious!

Wednesday, Miso and Peso left for Kyoto and Scott and Meredith came out to Tsukuba. Meredith visited the school where I volunteer and taught a great lesson on making one’s own accordion books. I have such talented friends! After school, she joined me on my new Wednesday hobby, indoor rock bouldering.

Thursday, I hit the Imperial Palace East Garden with Scott and Meredith. First, though, we checked out Akihabara, the electronics district, where we found this great sign.

Then we ate a choco cro [there'll be a whole post about these coming soon] – and then it was off to the East Garden . . .(well, okay, those shots are actually taken just outside the entry to the garden, but I was very taken with the flowers in this planter. Now, the palace garden:)

I must confess that after such a cold winter, I have gone a little sakura (cherry blossom) crazy. My phone now has a picture of the blossoms above on it, and I’ve bought a travel mug from Starbucks that is decorated with stylized sakura. And the sakura are not even at their height yet.

Friday was Daniella’s birthday, so we had a little dinner party.(this is the box of the cake in the first picture. You MUST click on this picture to open it larger and read the label. It is classic.)

Daniella, who was an elementary school teacher in Seattle, teaches private English lessons here. This is the gift one of her students gave her on Valentine’s Day:

Yes, that is a chocolate wrench. I mean, what else could say “Valentine’s Day” like a chocolate wrench? When Daniella commented that that was a very interesting gift, the mother of Daniella’s student replied that the wrench was symbolic, because the mother hoped that their relationship with Daniella would grow closer and tighter. It’s very sweet, if you think about it . . . (I love the puns!)

Daniella also remains the Ikebana super-star:
Last, check out my fabulous new t-shirt:

And so it begins . . .

Well, spring (and the cherry blossom period) are both far away, but I was surprised to see some trees starting to flower.

Here's a picture of a tree in Shinjuku National Garden. A few trees in the garden (which I visited for the first time on Saturday with Scott and Meredith) were flowering, and you could tell which ones were flowering because they were surrounded by Japanese people taking very pictures with very SERIOUS cameras as well as people painting the early blossoming trees.

I, of course, forgot my camera, so Scott took this picture.Scott and Meredith are here, as well as our friends Miso and Peso. The first two are staying at the Lost in Translation hotel (very swank!) while the latter two are staying in similar quarters out here in Tsukuba with us.

Yesterday we all went to Yoyogi Park, Harajuku, and Omotesando. Today we are all headed out to Kamakura (hope the sunny weather holds!) and then to join Mike for a yummy dinner at Raku in Shibuya.

Top Eleven J-Pop Hits (19 February to 3 March 2006)

[Note: this is a message from our recent guests, B-hatch and Fatts]

1. Karaoke. Private rooms with all you can drink packages. Best if enjoyed with a former Kiddush cup winner who gets bombed on sake after belting out a Stones hit (though not a deep cut from the big four).

2. At Kiyomizu, there’s a miniature shrine where you can spend a hundred yen to get into the womb of a goddess. Something you should know about the womb of a goddess: it’s very dark.

3. Pachinko. Loud and oddly animated, Pachinko is like slots, only instead of cash, you win steel marbles.

4. Onsen. There’s no bathing like hot spring bathing. And there’s no hot spring bathing like nude hot spring bathing. Best indicator that we got out at the right time: the guy who got in as we were leaving was making duck noises.

5. Warm beverages in the vending machines. Japan is notorious for vending abundance, but the real genius is the hot beverage selection. Why is America so stupid? Most recommended is anything made by means of milk.

6. Toilets. Heated seats, front- and backside sprays, a dryer, small and big flush options, oscillation.

7. Ramen shops. Cold tea, hot napkins, good eats.

8. The Miyazaki Influence / the Zimmerman Influence: Totoro! Totoro! Totoro! Every brand has its cartoon; every slogan has its poetry. “The way that a ball like the sun bursts open is the order of this store.” And: “Don’t worry, be smile.”

9. Su-tu-RAUS-zeh MI-ka-le. Making ourselves understood by the Japanese takes some finessing. If you are looking for Hakkaku restaurant, asking for Akaka won’t get you diddly.

10. Minami-nagareyama. The subways are very good about announcing stops in English, almost too good. If you ride the Tsukuba Express between Tsukuba and Tokyo as much as we did, you will have NIGHTMARES about the constant announcing.

11. Mike and Kate. The best hosts, and the key to a fun trip.

Winter

Apparently did not take kindly to me wishing for spring.

It is now snowing here. A lot.
Big, wet snowflakes - so far nothing is sticking, but if this keeps up as the temperature falls this evening . . .
Perhaps Mike and Brian will be taking a cab back from the train station (they are in Tokyo for the day) as the beast does not go out in the snow.

Book reviews

Well, it’s that time again. Rob, feel free to read some other reviews here or here.

The Flower Master [Sujata Massey], I discovered Massey this summer and have read seven of her books since then. I love that the detective is a young woman about my age, that she lives in Japan, and that she notices all the Japan weirdness (off topic case in point: yesterday I went shopping. Store #1 was playing gangster rap, store #2 was playing “Mary Poppins.” The best part? Both stores were selling bath products not four feet away from each other). Okay, so, anyway, all the Rei Shimura (the detective) mysteries are smartly written, funny, and have great Japan details in them. And the detective is not a batty, nosy old retiree. So read the books, already!

Ocean’s End: Travels through Endangered Seas [Colin Woodard], I found this book interesting, although perhaps weakly researched (or weakly edited?) in places. For example, if you tell me that non-native comb jellies are eating ten billion tons of life per year in the Black Sea and that this is “more then ten times the weight of all the fish landed by all the fisherman in the world in a year,” do not several pages later repeat this same statistic, but change the second part to read “more than times the weight of all the creatures landed by all the world’s fishermen in one year.” Creatures and fish are not the same, and it looks shoddy to equate them in this way. This might be a petty criticism (too bad! my blog!), but I think it’s fair if the book wants to be an academic book. Now, whether it wants to be that or not, I was never really sure, owing to the schizophrenic way that the footnotes were presented (in the back of the book by page number). I would say that this would be a good selection for high school or college students to get them thinking about the ways human activity impacts ocean systems, except for the fact that I think Woodard equivocates more on climate change than is necessary (the book was published in 2000, after all). Still, Woodard captures an important story and sections of this book might make for a nice classroom discussion.

My Sister’s Keeper [Jodi Picoult], This book was a sad, quick read. I finished it at 3am with tears running down my face. Almost enough to keep me from ever having kids. Of course, when you start with a child suffering from cancer, you just know things aren’t going to end well. Some parts of the story were stronger than others, however. The father’s character was a bit underdeveloped in comparison to the mother’s – was this intentional (to show something about their relationship?) or just how it happened? I also thought that the mother’s sister could have been more fully developed – she was presented as a lonely working drone, sweeping in to save the family, but didn’t she have a life of her own? Furthermore, the sideline lovestory that develops was a bit unnecessary in my opinion. Also, I am not sure how one can end up a ballet teacher if one has never taken ballet as a child – or maybe I just missed the part about the character having taken ballet as a child. If you don’t like sad books, don’t read this one (strangely, I tolerate sad books much better than sad movies), but otherwise I think it’s a fine book club selection. It won’t change the way you think about life, but it is a well-written story.

A History of Cambodia [David Chandler], I read this book in preparation for our trip to Angkor Wat. Unfortunately, the Tsukuba University library didn’t have the updated version from 2000, so I read this from 1983, missing much of the recent work that has been done on Cambodia’s history, I’m sure. Chandler is a decent writer, but not the best academic historian I’ve ever read. The task is Herculean: to present all Cambodian history in 200 or so pages. The problem with such an approach is, of course, that it leaves the reader deeply unsatisfied. I was reading the book to learn more about Angkor, but the discussion of Angkor was, maybe, 20 pages or so. I did manage to learn some useful things, and we supplemented our knowledge with a book just about the temples that we bought in Thailand. I actually didn’t finish this book because I kind of felt like since the book itself stopped in 1970, it was sort of an unfinished work as well. The 2000 edition of this book would undoubtedly be better on this count, and I understand that Chandler is the leading historian of Cambodia, so his is probably the book to read.

Prep [Curtis Sittenfield], This is being hailed as the new Catcher in the Rye. I, for one, found very little that I liked in Catcher in the Rye, so this wasn’t really a selling point for me. This book did, however, speak to me more than Catcher in the Rye did. There are some interesting observations about race, class, and beauty that come out here, along with some very funny stories about the way the rich live. And while some reviewers have suggested that the main character was not very likeable, I liked her fine and even found myself identifying with her older self in places. The construct of writing about high school from the vantage point of one’s mid-twenties is, I think, a good one. The book does have an unsettling ending (perhaps much like high school?), and I think the story does lose steam in the denouement, but this is not a fatal flaw. For me, this was beach reading a cut above what one normally thinks of as beach reading. It does have a bit of a chick-lit (or, as I’ve been told to say, “books aimed at women”) cover, but I think there is more story here than that suggests [insert aphorism here]. However, based on my quick reading of the excerpt of her second book that was included in the back of this book, I don’t have much hope for the second book.

Victory [Joseph Conrad], I love Conrad. Enough said. Interestingly, I always thought that he had been a desk worker all his life and that his literature was all based on how he imagined far-flung places to be. Yet, in reading the notes at the beginning of this book, I discovered that I was wrong and that Conrad had done some serious traveling. Victory, like Heart of Darkness, is a frame story, and, again, like Heart of Darkness, it is told in such a captivating manner than one manages to forget this. This book also engages with human passions and the isolation of the tropics, and (no surprise here!) it doesn’t end well. Of course, you know this, and, of course, you can’t stop reading. My first thought upon finishing this was actually that it would make a really great movie (of course, you’d have to maybe tone down the master-servant relationship[which didn’t add much, really] as well as be careful about how one presented the island’s original inhabitants). Being not much up on Hollywood, I can’t tell you which actors and actress I would cast or even if such a movie has already been made. But this is a great story, and the lush setting makes it ripe for visual presentation.

I’m currently reading too many books to list. I used to be a one-book-at-a-time kind of gal – what happened?

last week was quiet

And our internet went out. So this is actually something I wrote last week, but couldn't post.

I completed this hat this week:This is my first project involving ribs. I struggled a bit with shaping at the top of the hat and had to email out a desperate plea of help to my panel of experts (thanks, experts!). Of course, the resulting hat in no way reflects on their knitting skills. Truth be told, I am not very happy with it. I don’t like the way the decrease looks on the ribs, though I know that it will look less dramatic once it is stretched out on the baby’s head. I wonder if there is a way to decrease only the space between the ribs while holding and knitting the ribs separately (maybe with a cable needle or something?). Luckily, babies are stupid and not terribly fashion-conscious so I think that I can still give this hat away as a baby gift.

Also, We found a farmer’s market near our house. The prices are pretty good (although I did see an exceptionally small amount of strawberries for almost $4), but the market also has its share of things we don’t really use or use in such quantities: daikon, Japanese scallions, or unidentifiable roots and leafy-things. I did buy some great looking spinach and broccoli, though. I hope that as spring comes, the variety of veggies will increase.

Spring? That’s right – we can finally start to think about spring here. Now, don’t get me wrong: although the sun is out today, we still need the heat on indoors, and I’m wearing flannel-lined jeans as I write this. BUT if you go outside between the magical hours of 11am and 2pm, you can sometimes catch a mild, warm-ish wind. Of course, by 3:30, any gentleness is gone, and if you find yourself biking home in the rain (as both Mike and I did yesterday), it is still bitterly cold and extremely unpleasant and enough to put one into a very foul mood (hypothetically speaking, of course). But at least now I do believe that spring will come. In fact, today I celebrated this by taking my first run outside since, oh, September.

Note: it has now rained a bitter, cold rain for the last 5 days straight. See what you get when you even DARE to think about spring?

Hakone

I just wanted to check in and let you all know what we have been up to, lest you worry. My childhood friends, the B-Hatch and Fatty, have been visiting us for the last week and a half. They seem to have been enjoying themselves, and they will both get a shot an a blog post later in the week. From Sunday until Tuesday we went to Hakone with them. Hakone is a Japanese hot spring resort town from which you can frequently see Mt. Fuji. Unfortunately, we did not get to see the mountain, but we did get some nice views, and a lot of baths. We went to the same strange bath themepark that Kate and Jen Em went to in November. Although it was actually snowing on us during some of the outdoor baths, we had a very good time.

My favorite bath was the water slide bath, and my least favorite was the "walking bath" where you walk through cold water on pointy, painful rocks.